“User Experiences of Spanish-Speaking Latinos with the Frontier Behavioral Health Website”
by Raquel L. Dean | Xchanges 14.1, Spring 2019
Introduction
This paper will explore the topic of the rhetoric of the way information is designed in the field of technical communication. Rhetoric, in the most traditional sense, is the art of communicating effectively and efficiently, to a specific audience, in means of persuasion or informing. This paper will focus on a website that delivers information regarding mental health services. The purpose of this will be to explore how the website is designed, how the content is presented, and the kind of experiences users have when they interact with the website. Individuals can be informed electronically (website, emails, blogs), word-of-mouth, or through print (brochures, flyers, mail). For individuals to receive mental health services, they must first be informed about those services. There are many variables that may affect their access and availability to utilize these services.
For the purposes of this paper, I define Latino/a based on how it is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB): “Latino” is defined as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race (2018). It is important to note here that the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” refer to the same ethnic-minorities description provided by the U.S. Census Bureau—the terms are interchangeable.
Research shows that Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States and are projected to reach 90 million by 2025 and 97 million by the year 2050 (Shobe, Coffman, & Dmochowski, 2009; Rastogi, Massey-Hastings, & Wieling, 2012). There are 50.5 million Latinos in the United States, which constitute 16% of the total U.S. population, and 66% of that Latino population are Mexican immigrants. However, Latinos are half as likely to seek mental health services as Whites. Research has shown that there are system-level barriers (lack of Spanish-speaking service providers, inadequate training in the delivery of culturally competent services), as well as patient-level barriers (different views of mental health and mental health treatment, concern regarding stigma, and poverty) (Adams, 2007).
Empirical studies continue to support that although progress has been made in the field of technical communication, there is still a digital divide. St. Amant and Sapienza (2011) stated that “over the past decade, electronic communication and new technologies have been steadily reshaping traditional communication practices” (406). Technical communicators must pay closer attention to how effective the delivery of their information design products is. In respect to the Latino population, its members may not have access and use the same information as non-Hispanics, due to language, cultural, and media-use differences (Viswanath, 2006).
The organization I chose to observe is Frontier Behavioral Health—a non-profit organization that offers individuals, ranging from youth, adults to elderly, access to psychiatric, psychological, and specialist consultation services. This project focused on facilitating usability tests that examined how Spanish-speaking Latinos interact with the Frontier Behavioral Health website. Frontier Behavioral Health expresses through their mission statement that they are dedicated in providing clinically and culturally appropriate behavioral healthcare and related services to people of all ages in collaboration with community partners.